GTA 5’s Los Santos is one of the biggest and most detailed maps in gaming. In the annals of video game maps, Los Santos is one of the best.
Despite this, I’ve never loved it. In fact, GTA 5’s Los Santos is my least favourite map in the mainline series since its transition to 3D.
I’ve talked about one of the reasons why the map disappoints me in my analysis of the map’s actual vs perceived size. Another issue, one that has bothered me since 2013, is that the map feels ’empty’.
This sentiment is not uncommon. Going back to 2013, people were expressing disappointment after finishing the story. The map, they said, felt empty and lifeless. For players who had invested in the story from beginning to end, the sudden purposelessness of the three protagonists in free-roam hits abruptly. Players who thought they’d play around in Los Santos long after finishing the story found themselves moving on way sooner than expected (at least until GTA Online brought some of them back).
What is responsible for this feeling? How can one of the most technically sophisticated maps ever made give the impression that it is empty?
Before I give my reasons, I must clarify that I am once again talking about a difference between perception and reality. GTA 5’s free roam map offers races, paragliding, tennis, yoga, hangouts, taxi missions, collectables, properties to buy, garages for vehicle upgrading, random events, stores to rob, clothing, barber, and tattoo shops, and a few other things.
When I say the map ‘feels’ empty or that it ‘feels’ like there is nothing to do, I am not stating these opinions as literal fact. What I am saying is that these activities fail to make the world feel ‘full’ as they did in past games.
In this post I will discuss why GTA 5 gives so many people this impression and what GTA 6 could do to avoid the same mistakes.
Interiors
One of the biggest reasons for GTA 5’s world feeling empty is its lack of interiors.
Each protagonist has an enterable house, but you cannot buy new houses like in San Andreas. Franklin technically gets a second house, but he cannot enter his aunt’s house after he moves out.
The story missions include several interiors, but Rockstar locks most of them after their respective missions are over for some reason.
Clothing stores, barbers, Ammu-Nation, tattoo parlours, and convenience stores all have interiors, but Rockstar diminishes their presence by reusing the same interiors across multiple locations.
It seems strange that Rockstar would put so much effort into making every building exterior different yet neglect to do the same for the interiors players would be using regularly.
But at least Los Santos’ services have interiors; its purchasable properties do not. This significantly reduces their ability to make the map feel like it contains anything more than facades. It doesn’t really matter that you can buy a bar or a theatre when you can never enter them and your only interaction with the owners is through the phone.
Restaurants, which have been in GTA games since Vice City, are also missing in GTA 5. How Michael got so fat is thus a greater mystery than the Mount Chiliad jetpack mural.
Overall, the lack of interiors and the repetitive nature of the ones GTA 5 does contain makes the world feel shallow. The world is incredibly detailed but that is hard to appreciate when practically every building is a painted box.
Sports Activities
GTA 5’s lack of interiors wouldn’t be so bad if there was more to do in the world. As I said, there are activities to do. Unfortunately, many of them are not exactly what I play Grand Theft Auto for.
To be clear, I define an ‘activity’ as a repeatable mission, as opposed to scripted, one-off side missions. GTA 5 has a decent number of side missions, but, like the story missions, they disappear after completion and thereafter contribute nothing to the free-roam world.
Sports activities comprise the largest category of activities in the free-roam world. There is tennis, golf, yoga, darts … all of which are better enjoyed in dedicated sports games or, better yet, real life. Activities like this do not iterate upon GTA’s core mechanics but distract from them.
Marathons are the only sports activity that use the game’s core movement mechanics—though considering that winning these races is as easy as tapping sprint and holding forward, they still aren’t great.
None of this is to say Rockstar should not include sports activities in GTA 6. They do add flavour to the world, and some people even like them. But they certainly should not take priority over activities that make use of GTA core mechanics.
Driving and/or Shooting-Based Activities
Activities are best when they play to GTA’s strengths—its core mechanics of driving and shooting.
GTA 5 has fewer activities of this type than previous games. It has no vigilante missions, ambulance missions, firefighter missions, trucker missions, gang wars, or demolition derbies, among others.
Its only legacy driving and/or shooting-based activities are taxi missions, races, paragliding, and store robberies.
You could also include hangouts in this category, although they offer less to do than those in GTA 4.
GTA 5 makes up for its lack of activities by including more scripted side missions than ever before. Assassination missions, for example, are not repeatable procedurally generated activities but scripted one-off side missions.
Quantity and replayability is thus sacrificed for quality and narrative—but is this trade-off worth it?
Dynamic Activities
GTA 5’s lack of dynamic activities is the biggest reason behind Los Santos feeling empty in free roam.
A ‘dynamic activity’ is a repeatable activity with procedurally generated objectives. For example, taxi missions are dynamic activities.
Procedurally generated missions have gotten a bad reputation since developers like Bethesda began to overuse procedurally generated content while failing to design their scripted missions any better. I am not saying Rockstar should scrap scripted side missions entirely—but a reduction of scripted content in favour of more dynamic activities would, in my view, be beneficial.
Non-handcrafted content can be good in moderation. It is still humans, after all, who dictate their parameters.
The world of GTA 5 would feel fuller and more purposeful if it offered dynamic delivery driver missions, tow truck missions, assassinations, vigilante missions, ambulance missions, firefighter missions, gang wars, and other such activities. If Rockstar had cut half of their scripted side content and diverted resources to dynamic activities, the single-player world of Los Santos would boast a much greater player retention rate.
Some people may question why repeatable post-story activities are necessary. Why not replay the game or accept that the game is over?
My answer is that considering how long development times are taking these days, the idea of post-story content is more important than ever. It could be twenty years before we get GTA 7. During that time, the urge to return to GTA 6’s world and roam around will inevitably come upon us. When that happens, I’d rather have something more structured to do other than go on killing sprees and get chased by the police–though I’ll also be doing that.
In addition to giving players something to do after finishing the scripted content, dynamic missions also provide good templates for roleplaying. Currently, if you want to roleplay a truck driver, for instance, you can drive a truck around and pretend to pick stuff up and drop stuff off. It would be better if the game had an actual truck driving activity with cargo, objectives, and monetary reward.
Likewise, if you want to roleplay a gangster, you can drive into enemy gang territory and have a shootout. But a turf map like in San Andreas would be much more engaging.
Services and Properties
GTA V has a decent number of services: barbers, Ammu-Nations, vehicle customs, tattoo parlours, stores you can rob and buy things from, vending machines, a few vehicle storage areas, impound lots, purchasable properties, and three clothing store chains. There is also a selection of purchasable properties.
As mentioned, the services suffer from repeated interiors, and the properties suffer from no interiors.
GTA V’s services also lack as many options as San Andreas, having fewer clothing, haircuts, and tattoo options. It does, however, have a larger selection of guns—though most of them are redundant. The vehicle customisation, however, seems about equal, if not greater–a positive feature somewhat nullified by the inability to change any character’s personal vehicle.
Conclusion
Overall, GTA 5’s world has a lot of content, but a misallocation of resources makes it seem emptier than previous games.
Rockstar put much time and effort into detailing building exteriors but not enough into their interiors. They put much time and effort into activities that distract from the core gameplay rather than iterating upon it. They put much time and effort into scripted side content but not enough into repeatable dynamic activities that would have given the free-roam world more longevity.
Only the number of services is genuinely strong, as long as you’re willing to ignore the lack of restaurants. Once again, the masterpiece that is San Andreas casts its shadow, making every one of its successors look inadequate by comparison.